Some nooby questions

AlphaTrinityAlphaTrinity North Wales, PA
edited April 2007 in Hardware
Hey guys, it's time for me to do some upgrading, but before I do I just have a few things I'm curious about:

My motherboard is an MSI board that supports socket 939. I never remember reading anywhere that it would support a dual core cpu, but I've spoken to some people and they said that it should support dual core, and if not it just needs a BIOS flash. I wanted to double check this with the SM gang.

Another question I have is about good cores for the socket 939. I'm looking at the Toledo 3800. Why I am asking this is because I want to be able to overclock to the same spec as I am overclocked to right now. My system was customized for this exact clock speed, and I want to be able to keep that while still going dual core.

I realize upgrading in this fashion is like polishing an antique, but it's all I can afford and unfortunately I don't really have the opportunity to save up because I need this upgrade right now. Thanks in advance for the help.

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited April 2007
    What model is your MSI motherboard?
  • AlphaTrinityAlphaTrinity North Wales, PA
    edited April 2007
    ms-7125
    http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo4_Platinum
    "Supports 64-bit AMD® Athlon™ 64FX/64 processor (Socket 939)"
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited April 2007
    What is the date of your current BIOS?

    (Sorry - I should have asked before. :p )
  • AlphaTrinityAlphaTrinity North Wales, PA
    edited April 2007
    The best I could find is Version 5.43.02.27.00
    If that's not it I'll look again.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited April 2007
    Look at the bottom of the screen when you first turn the computer on. The Pause key on the keyboard will freeze the screen if it blinks by too fast to read. The date alone should be enough to see where you stand. :)
  • AlphaTrinityAlphaTrinity North Wales, PA
    edited April 2007
    Ah, I see now why I missed it. I had to spam the pause key because the screen only appears for a fraction of a second. The date is 9/9/2005. I noticed on that link I put that it says Athlon x2 ready, but you would think they would put Athlon x2 under the cpus the mobo supports :scratch:
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    Most motherboards with support for FX CPU's should support the X2 lineup out of the 939 socket setup. At least that is from my experience with old MOBO's. The last Bios update for that motherboard is from 9/9/2005 and it does support the E stepping that the X2 runs on...
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    Yup BIOS version 1.4 added support for the E stepping back in May of 2005...

    v. 1.4 361 kb AMD Award BIOS 5/10/2005
    2. This BIOS fixes the following problem of the previous version:
    - Support AMD K8 reversion E stepping CPU.
    - Update NVPXE version to 2.12.
    - Update NVMM version to 4.94.
    - Update SiI3114 RAID ROM version to 5.2.03.
    - Update CPU ID.

    You ar running version 1.9 so your in the clear for a Toledo or a Manchester X2 CPU:) It is the Windsor Core that was the F stepping... and most of those are AM2 chips :)
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited April 2007
    That's the latest BIOS version available and it should support an X2 CPU. To be on the safe side, I'd recommend emailing MSI and see what they say. My older version of that board (the Neo2 Platinum) supports X2, so my guess is that you'll be fine. :)

    EDIT: Nice job, Sledge. :cheers:
  • AlphaTrinityAlphaTrinity North Wales, PA
    edited April 2007
    Okay, very cool, thanks guys.

    Now I just need to know how well the Toledo overclocks. I don't need it to be a huge overclock, but I would like to know if it is known to run stable with some overclocking. I will need to be able to overclock it at least 250mhz, not too bad considering I overclocked my Venice 450mhz.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    When I had my 4400+ X2 and 4800+ X2 I was easily able to get over 250mhz more of of them...
  • AlphaTrinityAlphaTrinity North Wales, PA
    edited April 2007
    Okay, thank you very much. Once again SM shows superiority over any competition.
    :celebrate
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    opteron 165 is best bang for buck in the 939 line IMO. Most hit 2.5+ on stock voltage. Mine runs 2.8GHz at stock voltage and stays fairly cool considering it is running a 55% overclock. The X2 3800+ is a good chip at a great price, and should offer modest overclocks.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    Yeah I would of given rec's for much better 939 CPU's but he said he was on a budget :(
  • AlphaTrinityAlphaTrinity North Wales, PA
    edited April 2007
    You can still recommend better cpus if you want. I'd be curious to see what is available for what price. Will my mobo support opteron though?
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    I would say that it almost certainly does. The 939 Opterons are really a Toledo core with more L2 cache and are just tested to higher standards after fab. If your board supports the X2 and FX chips then I would be very surprised if it would not accept the opteron series.
  • AlphaTrinityAlphaTrinity North Wales, PA
    edited April 2007
    I did some research, and I think I'm going to go for the 165. I like the extra l2 cache, and that I'll be able to overclock more than I originally planned for.

    One question I have is why is the HT on the 165 half of that on the toledo 3800? This doesn't really affect my decision, I'm just curious.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    IIRC, sometimes the HT is quoted as 2000MHz instead of 1000MHz because it runs at 1000MHz in each direction. So technically it is 1000MHz, but you can send in both directions at once at that speed, making it effectively 2000MHz.
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